Original subtitles

On this gold rope.

You got to do something different once in a while.

As the price of gold hits an all -time high, Tony Beat hunts down a monster

machine.

Oh, you seen that there, Gavin?

Does that look like quite a contraption to you?

Yeah. Hoping to double his gold haul.

Rolling.

Was that gold or what?

Fred Lewis faces the biggest decision of his mining career.

I'll take the burden on this. If that cut doesn't pan out, it's on me.

It's always a gamble, man.

Rick Ness is taken to the core.

You got a bad accident.

Where's the black back glass?

And Parker Schnabel gumbles on new ground.

Ready to go drilling.

Spend some more money.

While his crew races to build the ultimate war chest.

What?

Oh, yeah. This is definitely a record breaker.

It's 3 p .m. today.

Awesome. Thanks, John.

In the gold fields of central Alaska, 26 -year -old Parker Schnabel is

determined to cash in on a 21st century gold run.

I really want to start another operation and get more gold coming in. Gold

prices are on a tear right now, too.

The only thing we need is ground.

The first ground he tested was no good.

Now he's come to Fairbanks.

I'm Parker.

I'm Laura.

Nice to meet you.

To meet one of Alaska's biggest private landowners.

Hello.

How's it going?

Good. How are you doing, man? John Reeves. Come on in, man.

What's bringing you up this part of the country?

I'm actually up here doing some exploration.

And somebody recommended I come talk to you. Good.

Glad you're here.

Come on over, man.

We're really looking for, like, large blocks of ground or, like, pretty big

-moving setups.

The bigger, the better, really.

We have several large blocks of mining properties that we've kept intact.

Okay. There's about 10 ,000 acres of patented land and then another 10 ,000

state claims.

Holy cow.

I have some that you'd find of interest, about 3 ,000 acres.

Oh, wow. I want to do some testing.

Rich, rich creek.

Just north of town a little bit.

So you want to do a little drilling on one of the blocks?

I'd love to. And the fact that you're drilling shows me you're pretty savvy

gold miner.

Not everybody does that.

It's a big move to come to a new area, and so I want to make sure that we cross

our T's and dot our I's.

And as far as deals go,

I think it's probably time for us to have a chat with these guys out of here.

Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, let's have a look. Get out of here, Dave.

Adios, dude.

Behind closed doors, Parker negotiates a deal to test ground at Cleary Creek.

Another job for drill expert Liam Ferguson.

John seems cool, actually. He's fine with us going in there, going drilling.

you've got a truck coming to pick the drill up in the morning?

Oh, that'll work.

20 miles outside Fairbanks, this claim is historically rich in gold.

Old -timers mining here have got 10 ounces per 100 yards of pay dirt, seven

times what Parker normally gets in the Klondike.

So we're going to move it out to...

one of these blocks of ground just north of town, Cleary Creek, and

see if we can find some gold.

It's always fun to go for helicopter flights.

It's actually my favorite thing to do.

Halfway through the season, Tony beats his only a third of the way to his 3

-ounce goal.

But he's on a mission to boost production and make the most of record

prices. I mean, it's never been this high before.

You got to do something different once in a while.

In the remote Yukon wilderness, he's got a lead on a mobile wash plant.

Oh, you seen that there, Gavin?

Does that look like quite a contraption to you or what?

That looks like a lot of stuff.

Looks like something I would buy?

Yeah, yeah it definitely does.

This 35 tonne trommel was designed and built 30 years ago by a maverick gold

miner.

It has a 40 foot drum and moves on wheels.

But it only ran for one season before it was abandoned.

Now Tony has struck a $400 ,000 deal to buy it.

Well,

first impression, Kevin.

It was definitely big.

It was very well built.

So all the wheels have hydraulic motors on it. So this thing just walks itself.

Yep. The crommel is designed to be fed with pay dirt directly

from the cut and spit the tailing straight out the back.

Then, when it's sluiced everything in range, it moves along on four giant

to sluice the next bit of gold -rich pay.

That's good.

And the gold price has hit.

So that's why I thought, you know what? If you don't gamble, right?

If you haul it out of here, bring it up the hill, put it back together.

Should be easier than moving a dredge? Absolutely.

I've known of that thing for years and years.

And now that I'm finally ready to sell it for a reasonable price instead of a

million bucks, I thought now would be the good time to buy the thing.

And if it works, bingo.

And if not wrong, so be it.

Well, there's no reason why I wouldn't.

Yeah? I think he's a goat.

I think so, too. Let's get out of here.

Bucket ponies camp at Paradise Hill.

Lend me a copy, lend me a copy.

Yes, I do.

Get the bungles.

We need to get that thing on the move.

He pulls together a seven -month crew.

So let's get...

and a massive convoy of equipment.

The plan is to haul the grommel back over the 100 miles of mountain road.

But he'll have to sit down his entire operation until he gets back at a cost

over $60 ,000 a day.

Youngest son and heavy load specialist Mike leads the charge.

Len Hoekstra, load the bunkhouse.

Tony likes to make a sleeping room in that bunkhouse, a little bit of kitchen

and stuff like that.

We're going to use this one in Moose Creek.

This will be the trailer we're going to use to put that bunkhouse on top of it.

And if you see over there, I've got a winch.

I'll take the winch light out of it.

Hook onto that one.

Slide it on this one.

That's how easy it sounds.

Now let's see how it goes.

Beautiful.

Have a look at this. I'm going to rinse it.

Have a look at it.

If something goes wrong, tell me.

with tony's house that ran into this thing so tony likes to have it perfect

probably gonna fire me

drop

the hooks around lift it up

Hold the wind's light.

Take that forward.

You're done. Take it off.

Trail end fuller.

That's it. We're done.

Okay, let's go.

Get it out of here.

So, we were not the only one who damaged it.

We did that small thing, and then Tony came in, and then you see the big thing

over there.

But, next time may be better.

We're off. We'll sneak it in again.

part of this trip is probably going to be trying to get across the ferry.

Weight -wise, it's not an issue at all right now.

Length -wise, though, that might be an issue because I'm, give or take, 80 to

feet long, and this ferry is only 80 feet long.

If they fail to add up too long, they won't let me on.

If Mike can't fit on the ferry, the nearest bridge across the mighty Yukon

170 miles downstream.

in the wrong direction.

I think the captain wants to talk to me.

I don't know, but I'm not... Hopefully,

yeah.

I don't know if they're letting us across.

Now we're on our way.

With the river behind them, The convoy hits the top of the World Highway, one

the most northerly highways in the world, aiming for the roadhead above

Creek.

So what we've gotten out of here so far is the lunchroom slash, that's also a

bedroom in there, so that's one person can sleep in there. We've got a loader

and a D6, the Oshkosh. We've got the Volvo 220 Ho.

We got two trucks, we got a pipe layer, we got a fuel tank, and we got a

mechanic circuit.

And so it's quite the little operation just to get a little plant out of there.

Hey, stop it.

Steppen, this is Fred.

Yes. Hey, brother, you're hitting the side of the wall over here pretty good.

It's dinging up the excavator.

We've got a dent on the back, so just be careful.

Got it.

If I continue at this current pace, I'd lose every penny I invested.

I need to recoup.

I mean, right now I've recouped nothing.

Fred Lewis.

And his crew of combat veterans are halfway through their season.

And they've found less than an ounce of gold.

This is a once -in -a -lifetime opportunity, but it's kind of turned

nightmare.

These guys came here to mine.

So their mindset right now is, where's the gold?

And I've got to have to show them some gold relatively quickly in order to keep

them happy.

As the most experienced miner on the crew, Senior Airman Kendall Mudden is

foreman. We're getting later into the season now. We don't have much gold to

fill for it, which is pretty sad at this point, you know.

Hello?

Parker! Can you hear me? How you doing, buddy?

I can hear you. How are you?

I mean, I'm alive, but everything else seems to be freaking about as hard as it

could possibly be here.

There's not a lot of goals, and I'm just spending money.

It definitely tries the patience, especially when you're first starting

don't have a lot of experience under your belt.

So I was hoping I could run things by you and see what you're thinking,

right now, with this short period of time... Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to help.

The good use of your time would be trying to do as much testing around the

as you can because if you're flusing stuff that has no gold in it, you're

wasting your time.

Yep. I would rather die a very quick death and realize that, oh, there's no

gold, there's no ground here that I can economically mine.

The sooner you can realize that, the better, right?

So we should be doing a lot more process.

Flusing a bunch of stuff just for the sake of seeing a wash plant.

And running is pretty pointless because your time is better spent elsewhere and

money is better spent elsewhere.

Okay. Well, I wish you the best of luck, Fred. If there's anything you ever

need, don't be afraid to reach out, man.

Yeah, definitely. And good luck, dude. I really appreciate all your advice.

Thanks, man. It's great to see you, Fred.

All right. Talk to you later.

I'm really glad that you called Parker because I think he had some really good

advice. It would be dumb not to call on everybody I know that has knowledge of

mining, I think.

But, you know, we still have a huge problem.

I was looking at the bank account this morning. We're almost broke again. Yeah.

We're out of money.

So we're going to need either more money or more gold.

Well, I mean, on the gold side of it, we've got to dig more to get more.

obvious. Well, if we find gold, that would be the big thing. Yeah, I know.

So my dad...

He has access to some scientific, like, X -ray machine.

He says this machine, if you could, like, you get these samples from

places, and then you could zap it, like, zap the sample, and it'll be like,

there's this much gold in this sample.

I mean, he's a smart guy. He works at a university. He probably knows what he's

talking about. Tell him to bring it. I'm not going to turn that down.

Kara's dad could be the secret weapon to turn Fred's fortunes around.

Hey, look, I think that's my dad.

Oh, that's the old man.

Yep.

Grabbing on red.

Fred Miller's specialty is environmental health and safety.

Hi, Dad.

Hey, there. How you doing, old man?

Not too bad, not too bad.

Hey. How you doing? Hey, man.

How's the mine going?

It's going.

Good. Could be going better, but it's going. Well, let's see if we can make it

better. Let me get my stuff out here. You have, like, a futuristic machine?

I do.

So, yeah, here you go. Handle that carefully. That's $15 ,000. Holy crap.

This looks futuristic.

The XRF gun uses X -ray fluorescence.

It fires X -rays into a sample, and these interact with the elements within.

making them release radiation.

Every one releases a unique pattern, which the gun then reads to identify how

much of each element is present.

So what we need to do on the claim is get some specific samples

in locations where you think it's very likely that you'll want to dig.

You're good? I'll go do that.

All right, and I'll get set up. I'll be back.

First, Fred hits the deepest part of the swamp cut.

Right now, I'm trying to get a sample from deeper than we're digging pegs. I'm

digging the hole, basically, towards the bedrock.

We've dug a little down here, but we aren't really processing this. It's too

deep. So we'll see what kind of gold this holds.

Fred collects thick samples from across the claim.

All right, we've got the old samples.

Great, bring them on in. Set them here on the table.

Okay, let's shoot our first sample.

So this is bank corner one.

It comes from that corner right there on the bend. We pulled a lot of large

boulders out of there.

For the ground to be worth mining, the sample must show a gold reading of at

least four.

This is kind of like the moment of truth.

I'm kind of nervous. What if it says...

You guys have a dud.

Okay, so what do we have here?

Tiny bit of iron, a lot of cobalt, some zinc,

and nothing else within its level of detection.

No gold?

No gold in this one.

Moving on to bank.

Same one, just number two. So this is from the same general spot.

What are you expecting out of this one?

Some gold.

Yeah.

Okay.

Zero. No gold. No gold?

Dude, I was expecting a lot more than zero.

Yeah.

All right. Keep going.

Next sample.

This one is the swamp cut, so this could be one of our better tests, hopefully.

This basically tells us currently what we're digging.

Okay, so this is the pay we're bringing in. Wait a second.

Right. This one definitely makes me nervous.

0 .22.

Oh, my God.

It's getting worse.

There's barely any gold in the pay Fred's been running from the top of the

cut.

So this one right here went down into the muck of the swamp, as far down as I

could get.

Okay. Deeper in the pit. Here we go.

4 .27.

Okay. Okay. I'll take that number.

Definitely take that number. Yeah.

Now I'm feeling a little bit better. 30 feet, though. That's from about 32.

Okay. Let's do the bank at 4 feet.

This one comes from over here, and it's about 4 feet down in that bank. A lot of

large boulders over there.

That's where you're hoping to see something?

Mm -hmm.

Oh, you're going to like this number.

4 .51. What?

Yeah. Putting a star next to that bad boy.

So 4 .51 on that device translates to almost a half an ounce, 100.

That's pretty good.

So the XRF kind of confirmed an idea I had about the bank over here, but I feel

like the main focus should be the swamp where we're digging now, but we've got

to go deeper.

Hey, step it.

Hey, I'm going to approach from the front.

Roger. The test shows that the best gold lies at 30 feet, just above the

bedrock. But all season, Fred's been running the surface dirt that contains

hardly any gold.

Oh, man.

All right.

I know you've been digging here a lot, and you've got a lot of pay stockpile,

but we're not going to run any of it.

I'm sorry. I know you put some time into it. Why isn't it any good?

You know, that pay I thought was going to be better, but it's just not

concentrated enough. I think if we're going to have the most success here,

going to have to dump all this low concentrated pay and go straight down to

bedrock. Last probably 17 feet has about 80 % of the gold.

And if we don't hit that, I don't think we're making money this season.

We've got to make money.

So your new goal in life is to reach bedrock.

All right, we'll just keep going until I get to it. That's why I put you here. I

know you like a challenge, bro. Good luck.

So, everything's on my shoulders.

No pressure, right?

I know that's frustrating, but, you know, I'm the boss. I've got to make

decisions here, and I think the best decision is to invest time in getting on

better pay.

You know, we have a short season and a short amount of yardage.

We're going to hit the gold hard, and we're going to put the most concentrated

pay through our kernel.

I'll tell you, this spot right here looks

good.

Rick Neff is almost halfway to his 1 ,000 -ounce gold.

He's faking the rest of his season on the 3 -acre deep cut.

a theme of Rick's glacier gold that's given him the best results on the claim.

You know, we've had to go down through over 60 feet of overburden. You know,

it's cost a small fortune. But it's worth it because at $1 ,900 an ounce,

you lose?

With gold prices at a record high, Rick's $100 ,000 investment in the deep

could see a return of nearly $4 million.

Last year was terrible.

I mean, there's no easy way to say that. That was almost the end of my career

right there.

But hopefully this year is going to be different.

I do like the fact that we're facing after something that

we did our homework on last year. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't

want to play that game again.

It costs a lot of money.

It's an expensive, expensive game.

The difference with Rick this year is complete night and day.

He's down here busting his ass. He's working right alongside us.

Because he's pumped up just like the rest of us.

Everybody's excited.

Why is it doing that?

Uh -oh.

That is definitely bedrock.

That's what we've been going down after.

And it kind of falls down in a wall, and there's a bench underneath it. That's

what all of our pay dirt is sitting on.

But for some reason, right here in the cut, this bedrock, instead of going

it's just jutting out.

Rick has hit a wall of fractured bedrock where he was expecting to find gold

-rich pay dirt.

Oh, that's not good.

That is clearly bedrock.

Definitely.

and with no gravel on it.

If there's no gravel, there's no gold.

In the section of the deep cuts Rick tested last year, he dug through 60 feet

overburden to hit a rich layer of pay sitting on bedrock.

This year, he's widened the hole out from the test site, but where he

to find more pay dirt...

He's found a wall of bedrock jutting into the current.

He tries digging deeper to see if there's pay underneath the bedrock.

We went straight down last year and dug a pit and got a beautiful deposit with

great gold. And now I expand the pit around where we dug.

And somehow we got so goddamn lucky last year that we managed to pick the one

spot where there's gold.

It doesn't make any sense. It's like, no, it can't be.

There's nothing in there. There's absolutely nothing. I mean, it's just

clay. There's no gravel in it at all. It's another 20 feet deep in there, and

there's nothing.

Landowner Troy Taylor's family has mined this pastry for 40 years.

It's got to be 80 there, you see?

Well, that's not good. The fact that there's no hay there, that does indicate

that the glacier came right up against that rim, maybe ended right there.

The hay probably comes back in upstream, but right now you don't have time to

drill that.

20 ,000 years ago, a rich gold seam was covered by the McConnell Glacier.

The front of it pushed up a layer of bedrock.

When the glacier receded, the bedrock wall remained.

Water then eroded gold -rich gravel upstream and deposited a layer of clay.

Troy believes Rick has hit the limit of the glacier and the end of the good

gold.

That's a pretty big deal.

Looking like we lost 80%. But what's in here?

Worse than flashbacks to last year?

That's sweet.

That's a major, major... I mean, I'm just basing it off of what we tested

year. This made perfect sense.

Figure something out.

I'm going to have to think.

Today has been pretty much a piece of... I don't blame anyone to...

Get out of here.

Think a minute.

There's no pay in there. There's no gold in there.

And we end up looking like idiots.

Like last year.

In Fairbanks, Alaska.

Parker Knavel and drillmaster Liam Ferguson bring in their sonic drill to

prospect a 3 ,000 -acre claim at Cleary Creek.

Ready to go and drill it.

Spend some more money.

Make some money.

Going to make some money.

Not working for you, we don't.

Mining the miners.

Oldest trick in the book, Parker.

The gold rust hit this part of Alaska in the early 1900s. The Fairbanks area has

since produced over 8 million ounces of gold.

At today's prices, worth over $15 billion.

Parker and Liam head out to choose a location to test, based on historic

drilling data.

One, two, three here.

This is the main cut. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so this is all...

For sure, this is all virgin along here.

Cleary Creek was dredged in the 1940s, but strips of virgin ground remain.

If Parker finds one of them, he could hit the jackpot.

It's about a 300 -foot strip here that was left by the dredge. So we're

on stripped virgin ground. We're hoping to put a few holes in, and if we're

getting results, same as what the dredge drilling did back in the 40s, and it's

looking like a pretty good spot.

We just got the drill moved over here to Cleary Creek.

Hopefully we can get some drilling down and find some gold.

It's Parker's last push to find new ground before he returns home to his

operations in the Yukon.

260 miles southeast at Indian River.

I think we're in pretty good shape here at Big Red. It's fluttered along pretty

smooth. All right, you bet. I'm just going to have her down on P here.

Yeah, got that.

Parker left Mitch Blaschke in charge of his entire operation, running Sluicifer

at the promised land and Big Red at the last cut.

Right now we're trying to not only sluice as fast as we can, but we're

open up ground as fast as we can, and that's been the challenge.

I just want to keep everything on track and have it.

Where it needs to be when Parker gets back. I want to have this operation run

smooth. I want to have a lot of gold down the gold room.

This season, the mine has averaged 450 ounces a week.

To keep up that pace for the four weeks Parker's away, Mitch needs to bring in a

massive 1 ,800 ounces of gold.

It's a big ask.

figure out and sluice through this year we know we've got out running 24 hours a

day. Obviously you don't want to come up here and you know be away from your

family and spend the whole summer you know working up here to go home broke.

My four -year anniversary and you know I really wish that either I could be home

or my wife could be up here but all the travel restrictions that just isn't

happening so it definitely makes it tough.

Brennan Rualt digs pay dirt in the last cut.

We're manpower short and equipment short, so everything here has to run

extremely perfect in order for us to have a fighting chance.

I definitely don't make the feeling of pressure.

I think he has a lot more sleepless nights than he lets on, so I hope

everything's going really smooth down there for him.

Mechanic Shane Smith feeds pay dirt into the plant.

It's just whether everybody can keep up to it or not.

Oh,

Jesus Christ.

Goddamn rock.

This whole belt's destroyed.

That rock got jammed right through.

Just fit right through the grizzly bars perfectly and it was sharp.

As soon as it got wedged in there, it just split the belt just like a knife.

I see some of the roller frames are bent, so until we get the belt off, who

knows what else we got to fix underneath there.

We're not making much gold this week, that's for sure.

Good morning!

Hello, morning.

Great. And I saw the dirt stop. I come down here, look, and a big boulder stood

up, just fit right through perfectly and slit the belt right in half.

So no fixing that one. It's going to be a long day today. It's going to be a

long one for sure.

With every hour the plant is down, Mitzi's chance of hitting his goal slips

further away.

You know, I thought when the boss was away, that's when everybody's supposed

do. Kick back, relax.

Yeah.

Never.

Not around here.

It's a race against time to get back up and running.

Mitch and Shane first lift off the hopper feeder.

We're going to try and do it all in one shot here. It's something we haven't

tried before.

So what we're going to find out here at 700 has enough to be able to lift

everything together.

The hopper feeder has a full load, nearly 30 tons of dirt.

Yeah, I just tried to get a little height here.

Got zapped out.

Hey, I've got it.

Couldn't have weighed one more pound, I don't think, and done it. It was

everything it had there.

Well, we've got the hopper feeder lifted off, and that's huge.

Now we've got access here to our busted -out conveyor belt.

Yeah, she's pretty gnarly, man.

She's ripped good.

They're not even that easy to cut.

You know how hard that rock was down in there.

It looks like we got a couple of busted roller frames here.

This one's completely taco'd.

Not only did the belt rip, but it did a bunch of damage to the rollers that are

underneath it.

There are no spare rollers on site.

Hopefully we can use the forklift here, try and pull this back into shape.

So Mitch improvises a fix with the forklift.

Nice and easy.

If the rollers break, replacements would take days to arrive, and Mitch would

lose any chance of hitting his target.

We're going to quit while we're ahead before we rip it in half.

Yep.

Yeah, that worked like a charm. That's actually awesome.

Certainly not as good as new, but good enough to work here, so we'll take it.

Now they have to realign the 500 -pound belt.

It's heavy, so you've got to use the machines, and it's a very delicate and

technical procedure here to try and get this belt back on.

Come on, James, straight in.

Open those rollers.

Close, buddy. We're almost there.

Come on, Ben. Okay, good. We'll push that in now. Okay. Come back and forth.

There.

You're home, Ben.

Perfect. There it is.

Now it's just a matter of bolting everything back up, grabbing the surge

putting it back on.

How are we looking there? Go down a little bit. Down a little.

More.

Whoa.

Good job.

Just going to undo the shackles.

That actually swung on pretty nice. It went good, yeah.

Now we're just going to bolt it up, hook up the hydraulic.

And we might even make it for night shift.

Fire it up.

The fix has worked.

But it's put Mick a whole gift behind.

It could have been a hell of a lot worse.

I can't thank everybody enough.

Appreciate it.

Good country?

Worst life!

Mitch has one more

thing to do before he calls it a night.

You know, it's been quite a few days since I've been able to message my wife.

Most of the time when I get back, my daughter's already sleeping, so I

got to see her in quite a few days. So I'm hoping I can run back, talk to both

of them, wish her a happy anniversary.

What's up, baby?

Happy anniversary.

How's she doing?

Hey, chickie.

I was really hoping either you'd be able to be up here or I'd be able to be

home, but unfortunately that didn't work out that way. I know.

All right, baby. Well, I'm glad I got to talk to you and see you, and I'm glad

she was awake. That's nice instead of getting in here when she's already in

Happy anniversary, and we love you too.

All right. Talk to you later. Love you.

Bye.

I love you. Thanks.

With everything going on at home right now, you know, that's tough. There's a

lot of people unemployed, so I'm thankful to be working.

I'm just trying to provide for my family, but I wish we were together.

The further down I dig, it seems like there's more and more rock.

In the swamp cut, Fred Lewis has asked operators stepping generally to dig 60

feet to bedrock.

It's where he believes he'll find a gold -rich pay layer.

It means like every bucket load has boulders in it.

All these boulders.

Can't get past them. I ain't going to be able to get through the bedrock.

It means we ain't going to find any gold.

Another big -ass rock.

Come on.

Damn it.

Oh, my God. My bucket is super loose, and it looks like it's not straight

anymore either.

Yeah, it's not good at all.

I mean,

it's obvious.

Right there.

It's teared off on the inside.

It's off -centered.

Yeah. What do you got going on?

Right here.

This one has forced its way out and teared off.

Did it bend anything?

Yeah, it's bent.

And, I mean, obviously, this is already off -centered, so you can tell that it's

bent. What about length? Do you think we have enough to try to go back through

for now? Because you know how it works around here. We've got to make quick

fixes. We've got to work with what we've got. We can't put it back through

because we don't have a bolt to retain it.

We have to replace the bolt. One, we need to get this out. Yeah.

It's not moving.

Nope.

So this right here is just putting the brakes to us mining.

It just seems like it's one thing after another.

Hey, man.

Come on.

Fuck. I'm going to heat everything up.

We're just trying to heat up our pin, expand it.

hole that it's in and trying to get this vent bolt out of there. This really

isn't enough force. It's the only thing we have laying around though. So, as

always, make do with what little we have.

Finally!

Part one, baby.

Oh yeah.

Nice machine.

All right.

Now he's got to realign everything and find a bolt to replace it.

Guys, I grabbed every nut and bolt from here to town.

Some are going to be short, some are going to be long, but maybe some of

will fit.

It's just barely kind of hanging on. It's got a few threads, but if we put in

the impact wrench on this.

That'll hold. All right, let's do it.

Hey, let's go ahead and test it, make sure we didn't break it.

That's good to go. Let's get to work.

Back in my own.

Now, next trip, she brings crayons, maybe.

It's our class of Tony.

Nearly 100 miles from his claim at Paradise Hill, Tony Beats has assembled

army of crew and a mass of equipment at the roadhead above Moose Creek.

Their mission is to haul out the enormous mobile trommel that Tony's

turbocharge his season.

Let's get the trommel out of there, because the sooner we get that thing

the sooner we'll go back.

Yes. Anyway, when we go down the hillside, try to bench it.

It's kind of steep in places.

Good enough.

Let's go.

Looks like we're about to go to war with trauma here.

Just follow right through the right, close to the right.

First trip somewhere, yeah. And before, always been safe, ever.

Is that what I think it is over there?

That's a rough ride, isn't it? Just makes you feel like gelatin, don't it?

I don't know what it makes you feel like.

The inside one's good, so it's just about the outside one, so I must have

something going around a corner.

But it looks like it tore up a rim.

Both of them, that's the first thousand bucks.

With seven crew members and so much machinery wrapped up in this mission,

wants the 35 ton, 20 foot tall trommel out of Moose Creek in just

three days.

Tony's plan is to dismantle the trommel piece by piece.

First the conveyor, then the sluice box and hopper, and finally the massive 20

ton drum.

Tony hooks up the pipe layer to haul out the 50 -foot conveyor.

I can afford to do it here with Warren.

Bingo.

Okay, Kevin, let me down.

A little bit more.

Same speed. Perfect.

Bingo. I think we had a very good day.

So let's not spoil it. Let's get out.

We got all our equipment in today. We managed to get from way down.

So all in all, pretty good day.

Come see where I'm sleeping.

Back at the roadhead, the bunkhouse will be home for some of the crew.

That's my bed, I guess.

Or that one, one of the two. That's better, Matt.

Gotcha. So that one's mine.

Hey, man. I'll be cozy as hell.

Don't worry about me.

But Commander -in -Chief Tony has plans of his own.

I'll be so cozy you guys have no place.

I'll be sleeping like a baby.

There you go.

But I can do this.

See, I even got a place to hold my shoes.

This is good enough.

I'll get naked, so why don't you guys get out of my bedroom. That's it. Close

the door, Mike. That's it. See you in the morning.

Bye.

In the mountains above Keno, Rick Ness' operation is at a standstill, and his

crew is reeling from coming up empty at the deep cut.

That's a disaster, right? We've spent a lot of time and money on that, and it's

going to produce zero.

Rick's out there looking for dirt, but we don't have much time left.

It's definitely going to affect us. Our goals aren't going to be the same as

what we expected, I don't think, now.

It's not good, man. It's not good.

Rick spent more than $100 ,000 getting down to bedrock at the deep cut.

But there's no gold to go for it.

And he stills 600 ounces short of his 1 ,000 -ounce gold.

Right now, I'm just scrambling to look for the future here for the rest of the

season because the deep cut was supposed to be it. So the plan is to get out and

find some different ground.

I'm hoping that that good red gravel we were running continues across the creek.

I don't see why it shouldn't.

All of Rick's gold this season has come from the cheap cut.

A streak of red hay gravel just two feet below the surface.

Rick believes the pay streak continues on the other side of the creek.

If his hunch is right, this could save his season.

Boston, the creek was never part of the plan this year, but don't have much of a

choice. So hopefully I can find something worthwhile on the other side.

I mean, this is giving me flashbacks of last year. It was like a dagger because

all it did was go.

It's just like last year, Rick. Nothing's changed, but I've got Kruzy

got Carly here, and I can't see them go and hand it. So we just got to flat get

it this year.

One more year like last year and we're all done.

Try a little bit to see if I can bust through it.

Yeah,

there's no

doubt about what that is.

Permafrost. Mud with ice mixed in it. At this point in the season, it doesn't

matter if there's 1 ,000 ounces right underneath us.

Well, we don't have the time or the capability to get into it if it's

It ain't thawing much anymore, and I don't have a big ripping dozer here, so

thinking my best bet is to kind of hug the creek a bit, because that should

afford me some thaw off the creek.

There's got to be some thawed hay along this creek.

To find thawed gold -rich ground, Rick heads 400 feet downstream.

Well, that's a good sign. I'm not hitting any permafrost underneath the

The distinctive red gravel is a good sign.

It could mean Rick Hunt is right.

And this is a continuation of the same pastry.

from the other side of the creek.

Hey, Cruzy, you got a copy, man? Yeah, I'll go for Cruzy.

Let's get those rock trucks rounded up. We've got paid gravel.

Oh, that sounds great, buddy.

He's got enough pay over there. We'll give it all to the plant and see if we

make it to the end of the season.

Break it up!

With the new creek cut, Rick is fucking business.

You know, this ground may not turn out to be as good as the ground that would

have came out of the deep pot, but it's exactly what we need right now.

You want to go play that?

Rip thing apart?

Get out of here, ASP.

Tony Beats is 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle on a mission to bring home

new monster trommel.

We need to get this out of here because it's already late in the season.

And if we don't hurry it up, we're going to be snowed in, which means we're

going to be a next year project.

So we're going to try it again, three next.

We've got to disconnect the pipes, we're going to take the bolts out.

And gang, up you come.

Okay, Mike, straight up, straight up. Straight up, yeah, straight up. Pull up

another foot.

Perfect.

Now do the swing of my way.

Leather down, leather down, leather down.

Perfect.

So there's our ghost foot.

Good. That means that we got the gantry off, the wire off.

We're going to get a push box off here in a second.

Okay, Cody, get in there. Bingo. Mike, that's good.

Okay, hook that thing up. Give him a hand.

Water.

Cody Hunter must cut off this loose box.

Everybody clear?

Clear. Okay, Mike, dry it. Got it.

Lift it up. Lift it up.

Lift it up some more.

Just

like

you are on the crane, Michael B.

Now I want waffles.

Put the cables over it, and then we're going to put the slings in the trommel

and see if we can lift it.

Everyone's got to wait until I climb down. Now I've got to climb back up.

If you were a hundred pound lighter, it would be easier, you know.

Okay, everybody clear out.

Now it's time to lift out the heaviest part of the trommel.

The 20 -ton, 40 -foot drum.

Well, first we're going to get the V6 attached to the frame.

This is going to get attached to the trommel, and the 220s S -Clear is going

get attached to the trommel.

And then once we get that trommel nicely up in the air, we're going to try to

pull the whole frame out with the stick.

We've got to find out if the envelope is done or not.

Tony's plan.

is to retract the hydraulic support so the trommel is resting on its wheels.

Then lift the drum and pull the frame out from underneath.

A

steel

plate has been welded to the leg to hold up the frame and take the pressure off

the hydraulic.

So that's got to come out.

Let's test it out and see what happens.

Taking the tire pressure so that we know we've got a pump on top of it.

We're going to pull those legs up to get it lower.

And the hammer comes.

Oh, she let go there.

That's good.

Right out of me. Yeah, me too.

If you could have your lunch, you're done.

That's what you do where you come from. Run like... Now?

Go.

President,

will everybody clear?

Kevin. Mike.

Bye, Blair.

Let's see what happens.

Now lift it up.

Lift it up, lift it up, lift it up, lift it up, lift it up, lift it up.

Lift it up some more. Hold it right there.

Perfect, perfect. You'll get on that D6 and move this thing.

Hold it down for a bit, Mike. Hold it down for a bit.

We'll say that. Let's go.

Go, go, go, go, go, go.

Keep her going, keep her going.

Mike, lift it up a half more.

Keep her going, keep her going, keep her going.

Go, go, go, go, go, go.

Hey, turn, turn, turn.

Move, move, move, move.

Perfect.

Hold it for a second.

That is good, Cody. That is good.

Leave it there.

Okay, gentlemen, let her down.

You good?

Yeah.

I think that went very well.

We made it work, so we got pretty lucky.

From now on, I'm sure we handled it.

Next up, we're going to roll it towards the creek.

Looking at the ground in front of me, it looks soupy as hell, so I got to be

really, really careful with this.

Over 1500 miles south in Oregon, Fred Lewis' future is on the line.

Really need to work our way down to the bedrock. That's where all the gold's at.

If we can't get to bedrock, our season's going to be pretty dismal.

Befin generally is in charge of digging down to bedrock, where Fred hopes he'll

find a layer of gold -rich pay.

Already noticed a couple times I've slipped a few feet.

In one instance, I flipped about five feet forward, but I'm actually watching

see whether the ground in front of me actually starts to give way.

It's pretty damn wet.

Big rocks have stumbled off the wall.

Hey, Fred Steffen.

Fred? Yeah, I need you to come down here. We can take a look at where I'm at

right now.

Hey, dude, that whole six -foot section just dropped off in front of me.

I started to slide on the right. I dropped a bucket.

And I think that rock in front of me is the only thing stopping me from going

any further.

I cannot dig here, man. It's not safe.

I'm thinking I need to get the hell out of this pit.

I don't think the risk that we're taking is worth it here.

I think we're going to have to abandon it.

We're going to have to make a decision and just move.

Yeah, let's get this thing out of the pit and let's figure it out. All right.

I'm going to go ahead and slowly work my way out of here.

Still spinning.

There we go.

There we go.

Right now we're pulling Stefan out of the swamp.

Stefan's been slipping more and more into the pit, and the water's pretty

Walls are starting to cave in. It's not a safe place anymore.

I don't care how much gold's down there, I'm not going after it.

It's a massive step back.

All the gold spreaders mined so far this season has come from this cut.

It's pretty much all for nothing right now.

Pretty devastating.

The most frustrating part about it is there is good gold down there.

So having to abandon it is abandoning gold.

Hey, Kendall.

Meet me in my office.

Hey, bud.

That swamp cut's done.

I can't put Stephen down there anymore.

Look, man, I understand there's a lot of risk coming down here.

It's a safety issue through and through.

But we've got to think about maybe reengineering this safely.

Can we dig it down, maybe a different ramp, maybe on the other side?

That's a landslide waiting to happen down there. So we had all these assays

with my father -in -law when Fred came out with the gun. Okay.

The pit does have gold. We know the swamp has gold. Has all the

of good gold, too. You're right. However, with all these obstacles we're

up against, the other assay that was really good was right there on the

hillside.

I mean, you've got to think.

We know that there's gold down there.

So we've got to make sure we're treading lightly when we're starting to move in

our abandoned cuts here. I know. I know.

Man.

I'm going to stick to my guns on this one.

I've just got a gut feeling that that's dangerous and I don't want to be the guy

that puts Stefan down in there to get him buried.

I mean, I served in combat with Stefan. I got his back.

We go back a long ways.

And if he tells me he's scared, I'll take the burden on this.

If that cut doesn't pan out, it's on me.

It's always a gamble, man. But we're on the same side now. We're agreeing.

All right, dude.

Let's hit it.

There's no other place on the farm that we can hit in this short time.

And it's really close to the colonel. The XRF gun that we brought out here, my

father -in -law shot, told us this spot right here had the most gold.

I think I want to call it the liberation cut.

So right now, this is probably the pivotal point of the season.

If we can't pull gold out of this cut, then it's the end of the season. I mean,

I can't put money into it if we can't pull gold out of it.

It's a little nerve -wracking, dude. I feel like it would totally make or break

on us.

Keep our fingers crossed.

This is the first official half -bucket low out of the great cut.

Sure as hell would be nice to find gold here.

Everything shows us that the gold's in this hillside. This is our moneymaker.

If this doesn't work,

the claim's probably not worth it.

Mitch Blaske is racing to sluice as much paydirt as possible.

hoping to hit his 1 ,800 -ounce, $3 .4 million target before Parker's

neighbors return.

Chris

Dumit

cleans the mats on washfront Big Red.

We're seeing gold, not mountains of it.

What do you think? Later today, you have a number for us?

Good. I do have a number for you tonight.

All right. Thanks.

You know, you try and get ahead every day, but it seems like most days you

just flip further and further behind, just trying to keep everybody on track

two wash plants running and everything else. It's certainly a challenge.

Right now, we're just heading up to the office, have a phone call with Parker,

just kind of give him an update.

He's going to be back.

Hey, it's Mitch. How's it going?

Good. How are you?

Yeah, we've been, man, everybody's had their head down out here trying to keep

up with both these wash plants.

When do you think you'll be back up here?

I'll be there tomorrow.

Oh, okay. Nice.

Perfect. Well, I guess when you get here, we'll go out and make a game plan.

Sweet. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

All righty.

I'll talk to you later. Thanks, Mitch. Thanks for the call. Yeah, no problem.

Parker coming back tomorrow after four weeks away means it's D -Day for me.

We've been bobbing through dirt here, making some headway, but, you know, I'm

not the boss, so we'll have to see if he's happy when he gets back.

Once we get this crap up and out of the hill, we'll roll them.

Anyway, we'll haul the trommel out first.

Yep.

Tony Beats is attempting to haul his new mobile trommel from Moose Creek to the

highway.

Pretty much all wrapped up around there.

So far, you know what, we've been lucky.

Weather -wise, everything.

If we can get these loads out without any trouble, I'll tell you, it's been

successful. Very successful.

Cody Hunter welds on eyes for the chains.

to secure the 20 -tonne trommel to the trailer.

Mike Beek brings in the odd cart, a 500 -horsepower military tank transporter,

to haul the trommel out.

He needs to get to the highway before nightfall in three hours' time.

United States.

Yes.

If I go too fast in the creek and I hit a worn rock on the back tire, and I get

enough too much of a lean, then the rest of the weight, especially the momentum

and the weight, could hit my truck.

The trommel, the trailer, and the truck.

Which is not fun.

But my tire came off in the air.

If I keep going slow but steady, don't be an idiot, then I won't have any

issues.

Now for the uphill climb.

2 ,000 feet of hairpin bends.

Come on girl, come on.

You can do it.

We're coming up on that nice calm spot.

Hopefully I'll make it.

Come on!

Oh, the tires are spinning.

You just had to say it.

What's up, Mike?

I'm stuck.

Like I said, you just had to say it.

We'll get that cable out of the trommel.

Okay, there's a loader on the way Mike

Hold

her out Now it's gonna

pull me up to the B9 And once we get there and it's disconnected, I should be

golden clear sailing.

So now that went good. That went real good.

Tony has got the trommel out of Moose Creek in three days, as hoped.

All that's left now is to truck it down the highway to Paradise Hill.

Well, gentlemen, what do you think? We climbed the hill, done and over it. No

rain, no snow.

We got it out, we got it accomplished.

Done deal.

So far as I'm concerned, cold around there, let's get home.

If it snows in the morning, we don't care. We are done.

So... Gentlemen, thank you very much. Let's go.

I've had enough of those. Let's do it.

Every year it's that race against the winner coming here. That's going to

us more than it ever has.

Two days ago, third -year mine boss Rick Neff abandoned the deep cut when he

couldn't find any gold.

We just spent the better part of a month digging a hole that...

Has nothing in the bottom of it.

I myself will not be taking any more days off or any time off for that

want to make this happen.

Now the crew's only chance of hitting their 1 ,000 -ounce goal is to run pay

from the new creek cut.

I want to go home with a bunch of gold in my pocket, and I know Rick does too.

But no one knows if it will be Bonanza or Buck.

Rick has given me an opportunity to...

to make more money than I've ever made in my life.

It's a chance for me to make a better life for me and my fiance.

I mean, for Rick to just hand that to me, it's humbling, and I don't want to

him down.

Mechanic Carl Rock scans the pay dirt.

These are nice boulders. Nice -looking rocks here, right? So, way bigger rocks.

I like the color, right? It's got a red tinge to it.

We won't know until we weigh this gold up for this week, but it's looking a lot

better here.

We're back on the good pace.

We have an emergency.

We have cruisers rolled this truck in a deep cut.

It's loaded. Get down here. It's bad.

Cruz has rolled his 30 -ton rock truck.

And he's trapped in the upturned cab.

You okay?

Your neck doesn't hurt nothing, buddy?

Your back not hurting nothing?

You alright, brother?

Jesus Christ.

Yeah,

I know. I turned around. I didn't see any of it happen. I see a truck here

laying on its side. I didn't see anybody moving around it.

He's bugged.

I'm just happy you're okay, dude.

This is a super slow -mo.

I've got it to the point where it's picked up that front wheel before.

It started feeling like that, and then it didn't stop feeling like that.

I prided myself in doing a pretty good job of taking care of these trucks and

not up.

Well, I'm just trying to figure out a good spot to rig it here. Yeah.

It's going to be a pretty hillbilly.

Carl connects the rock truck to the 480.

This is not how you rig stuff, but we need to get this thing flopped over in a

timely fashion, so this is what we're going to do.

Okay, go ahead and start pulling.

You and down.

Go straight down.

Watch yourself, guys.

Hold it there.

Hey, Rick, hold it there.

The loader is right here. Yep, let's get that loader.

The trap's about to slip off, so I'm just going to get a chain, get the

in here, and get it the rest of the way over so it doesn't flop back down again.

Costing us time and money.

It's not a good feeling.

Just going to tilt it a bit more. Tilt it.

I just want to get back to those trucks that are hauling dirt.

I like that, so now you can put it down.

Just like Rick, get ready.

Everybody good?

Good.

Good, you're good.

I thought that part of the text, I knew who it was, and I saw it, and I didn't

see anybody moving around.

And, yeah, it didn't feel good, so... I'm just glad he's okay.

I don't give a **** about this truck.

I'm just glad you're all right.

If you wanted out of a truck that bad, you just had to tell me, dude.

A few hours after the crash, Chris and his truck are back to work.

Zero physical harm.

Quite possibly irreparable damage to my pride.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the cut...

Rick and Carla Ann clean up the first of the pages from the new creek tuck.

Rick's mining future rides on this result.

We're late for this cleanup, so we're going to have to really hustle on that.

looks like the same material we were digging when we were having our best

so I'm really hoping that it's got the same gold in it.

But like you say, Carla, we won't know until we put it on scale.

We pretty much popped our hats in with the liberation cut here

and listening to what's going on, you know, the testing and everything.

I hope we made the right choice.

At Elkhorn Claim, at the end of the week, Fred Lewis calls his crew

to weigh gold from the new liberation cut.

Is everybody?

All right, guys.

So we're now all in on the liberation cut. It's going a lot easier up there.

Oh, it is, it is.

My base is stable. I'm not worrying about sliding around, or obviously

no water drainage issues on that cut. Your father -in -law said that it tested

the best out of any place on the property, right? It did, it did.

Fred had to abandon the swamp cut when it got too dangerous to mine.

Now his season depends on the liberation cut, delivering at least half an ounce

of gold per hundred yards of pay debt.

You guys ready to see what we got?

Yeah. Always. Let's do this.

Let's see what we got.

Come on, baby.

No whammies, no whammies.

This 60 -yard run needs to produce at least a third of an ounce.

0 .36.

Nice.

Worth just $700.

But if the goal continues at this rate, the liberation cut could save Fred's

season.

No, guys, this is, uh, we're moving upward. We're not moving down. That's

only thing I give it about right now.

You know what that puts our goal total at, right? What? Half an ounce? 0 .99.

Oh!

Let's pull every bit we can out of this liberation cut and keep putting gold in

the pan. All right.

Let's go get some more. Get back to work. All right. Yep. Good job.

We'll hit the new cut, start getting more gold. It should be a lot more

efficient, a lot easier to move dirt around, and I'm excited to see.

we get some more gold.

We're moving on to the liberation cut for gold refactors, and we're all in.

There's no other option for us at this point, so we're moving forward, striving

on, pulling gold out of the ground.

It got really quiet all of a sudden.

Were you guys talking about something stupid?

We were talking about you.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

Rick Nass and his crew have run pay dirt from the new creek cut for four days.

No argument from anyone?

No. Well, not after this week.

But, yeah, I mean, it was.

It was really tempting to bury my head kind of like I did last year, right?

Yeah. You know, I promised myself I wouldn't do that this year, and I

you guys that too, so we just move on, right? Yeah.

So, I mean, down week, yeah, but there is still golden pan.

To stay on track for his 1 ,000 -ounce goal, Rick needs this cleanup to be at

least 30 ounces.

Here we go. Here we go.

We do have 10. We got 20, 30, 40.

So we have 45 .06.

Nothing wrong with $85 ,000, my friend. Oh, good way to put it, Carl.

Team Neck is still in the game.

If we can keep getting kicked in the ass and still pulling these off, well.

At a certain point, we're going to stop getting kicked in the ass, right?

We went from losers to heroes now, man. If we keep this up, I'm happy.

Keep our heads up. Yeah. All right. Well, like Kyle said, we'll keep moving

Thanks a lot, guys.

Sure. Keep on, keep on. Keep on keeping on. Keep it.

Parker Snable is back in the Yukon after his prospecting trip to Alaska.

Welcome home.

He's just in time for the big four -week gold wave.

I don't even remember what gold looks like.

It's been gone so long. It looks like that yellow stuff right there.

So how was your trip?

Drilling didn't go great on the first property, but the second one it did.

a place called Cleary Creek.

It's going to take a few years to develop.

A lot more exploration that needs to get done.

Boy, it'd be a heck of an adventure, wouldn't it?

Mitch Blaschke and the rest of the crew arrive to see how much gold they've

produced in the month Parker's been away.

Oh, hey, you made it back.

I'm back.

Did you find yourself?

Did you find your center?

So what do you think? Are we going to be moving wash plants there? If gold

prices stay high, there's a good chunk of mining there, I think. We just need a

plane. And then any of us could go back and forth quite easy. It's like an hour

and 20 -minute flight.

That's cool.

No, it's good. It looks like things have been going great here.

We were busy. You guys have been busy.

We were very busy, yeah. Definitely tired.

First up, the gold from Mitch's last week in charge.

So this was for Big Red. Oh, okay.

Okay.

Yeah. All right. 20, 30, 60, 80, 100, 120, 130,

140, 150, 160, 170, 174

.25. So Tyson, this is yours.

And then this is not his, just to be clear.

Mitch needs 1 ,800 ounces total to prove himself as a second in command.

At least 450 ounces every week.

1 ,930.

Together, Lucifer and Big Red have produced 293 ounces worth $550

,000. Well short of Mitch's weekly target.

Yeah, no, there's definitely some bumps in the road. Yeah, there's definitely

some bumps in the road along the way.

Smith's was a big ride. We worked through those.

Now for the gold from the previous three weeks.

Let's see this stuff.

All right. So what we have.

Don't drop it.

Is this the last one, Chris?

Are they like 200 apiece or 300 apiece? They're like 500 apiece. What? By five.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

In the four weeks Parker was away, Mitch smashed his target with 2

,293 ounces of gold.

Worth... $4 .3 million.

There's your airplane.

We can all have our own.

That's like the biggest one we've ever had, isn't it? Oh, yeah. This is

definitely a record breaker.

That used to be a season. Oh, yeah. And a good one, too.

Feels good to get sitting there. You guys crushed it. Nice work, buddy. Oh,

good. 2 ,000 ounces. There you go.

Good job, guys, really. Doesn't even feel real looking at those.

Right?

So we got a season total.

47, 87.

I should leave more often.

I mean, if you want.

This takes Parker's total so far to $8 .75 million.

I'm pumped.

To be able to be gone and have one of the best months this company's ever had

awesome. And I just... Can't thank you guys enough.

You know, I think that just goes to show, you know, what a strong team we

here and just, you know, what we can get done even though Parker wasn't around.

That's so much gold. It's such a good feeling.

And, you know, I'm really, really happy that he liked the results.

The fact that things went so well here tells me that I should be making

something else happen.

We had a 2 ,000 -ounce month, but what if we had two operations that did a 2

,000 -ounce month?

I don't know.

That'd be fun.

And lots of pain and suffering, but also fun.

Next time on Gold Rush.

Can I come in? Parker's navel needs new ground from an old rival.

What the... We need the water now.

Fred Lewis' wash plant.

Yeah, man, I'll get right on it.

Threatens to sink his season.

And Tony Beat's plans go up in flames.

Get out of my place.